Grinder

Nate Jenkins is a hero for all runners with more grit than genetic gifts

In November 2007, Jenkins put together an inspired performance at the Olympic marathon trials, running 2:14:56 for seventh in a field that many observers called the finest ever assembled in an Americans-only race. His hamstring gave out around 19 miles, but he limped home well enough to pull away from Rohatinsky, the 2006 NCAA cross country champion, and to pass the 2004 Olympic marathon silver medalist, Meb Keflezighi, over the last half mile. Jenkins' training leading up to the race was only average, but he was characteristically strong over the last several miles – the section of the marathon that his training philosophy is supposed to target.

Jenkins was one of the last athletes invited to run in the 2008 New York City field, and his appearance fee was almost an order of magnitude lower than what the top athletes were paid. That money, though, was like a gift to Jenkins, who needed cash badly but would have run for nothing. Since finishing graduate school he has been forced to defer his student loans to make rent, and in the summer of 2008 became anemic when an effort to squeeze the most out of his budget found him eating the cheapest high-calorie food he could find, which turned out to be oatmeal covered with sugar.

Templeton teens attend Narragansett Regional High School, which serves Templeton and nearby Phillipston. Narragansett is where Jenkins began running competitively. In seventh grade, he signed up for cross country to get into shape for basketball, and by eighth grade he was hooked. In the mid-1990s the Narragansett cross country team was a regional power, and Jenkins was part of a squad that won Division II state titles in 1995 and 1996, his freshman and sophomore seasons. In the spring of his freshman year, he ran 10:18 for 2 miles during track, which made him one of the top underclassmen in the state. Over the next two years, however, he seemed to stagnate. Jenkins' coach followed an Emil Zatopek-type training plan filled with intense interval sessions and low mileage, a style of coaching that gets young athletes into shape quickly but also often fails to develop them in the long term. After Jenkins' junior year, his 2-mile best had improved only modestly to 10:04 and, by then accustomed to a certain level of success, he was disappointed.

In what has become a major theme of his career, Jenkins was willing to do whatever it took to improve. He was at the limit of his ability to run more intervals, though, so he began experimenting with higher mileage. With spare time during the winter break of his senior year, he ran 70 miles a week. Over a one-week vacation in April he ran 95 miles – an unusual amount of mileage for a 17-year-old, and, as Jenkins reminded me, he did this during the 1990s when mileage-based programs were unpopular in the U.S. In June, his senior spring, he ran 9:47 for 2 miles and placed fifth at the state divisional meet. It was enough to convert Jenkins into a full-time high mileage runner.

In 1999, Jenkins graduated from Narragansett and was recruited to the University of Massachusetts at Lowell by longtime coach George Davis. By then he was fully enthralled with high mileage, and the summer before his freshman year he ran up to 120 miles a week, 40 above the training schedule Davis had given him. As a freshman that fall he was first man on the Lowell team, but the work quickly broke his body down. He ignored Davis' instructions to rest after cross country, and by January he was injured. It took him years to recover.

Initially, Davis believed that Jenkins would self-regulate his training, but after two years of repeated cycles of injury, recovery, and overtraining, Jenkins eroded any patience Davis had left. "He sort of had this theory," Jenkins says, "that if you just let someone touch the stove they'll figure out it's hot." Jenkins proved to be Davis' exception: The stove never felt quite hot enough. The spring of his junior year, he stopped by Davis' office and got chewed out. "He was like, 'I don't know how stupid you gotta be, but you keep touching the stove and touching the stove, so that's it, I'm outlawing it! Not near the stove!'"

During Jenkins' fourth year at Lowell, Davis decided to retire and brought in a young coach from the U. S. Merchant Marine Academy named Gary Gardner. Gardner, a former star at Keene State College in Keene, N. H., had immediate success with the men's distance team, and rapidly built credibility with Jenkins. At first he maintained the same tight rein on Jenkins' training that Davis had been forced to impose, but as Jenkins became stronger and strung together more and more injury-free months, Gardner began to allow Jenkins more freedom in his training. This time Jenkins' body cooperated, and with several seasons of eligibility remaining, he returned to Lowell for a fifth year as a graduate student in the education program. Healthy and fit, he won a regional title in cross country and helped Lowell to a 10th-place finish at Division II nationals. During the winter indoor season, he ran a series of good 5,000m races and qualified for his first national track championship. Still, his college career was coming to a close just as it was getting started, and he had achieved a fraction of what he imagined he might have five years earlier.